


An Answering Ripple

by Mellacita



Category: Merlin (TV)
Genre: Fix-It, M/M, Reincarnation
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-12-29
Updated: 2012-12-29
Packaged: 2017-11-22 21:41:50
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,628
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/614659
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Mellacita/pseuds/Mellacita
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Unbidden, an image comes to his mind. A tall figure, dark-headed, lonely, standing on the shore as all of time swirls around him, casting his love into a lake and watching for answering ripples that never come. Spoilers for 05x13.</p>
            </blockquote>





	An Answering Ripple

1\. Freya

Freya receives Arthur’s boat, and if she remembers that he killed her, she doesn’t dwell on it for long. She would do anything for Merlin, and if it means guiding the boat and holding the sword until it is time to give them back, she does it gladly.

 

2\. Morgana

The first thing Morgana is aware of is that she is being crushed.

As she opens her eyes, she takes in the ground around her, the ash-ends of leaves that half bury her. She hears the beating of wings; sees a pale blur disappearing into the sky; feels the lingering magic woven into the still-warm breath that surrounds her.

There is nothing holding her, nothing on top of her. Nothing to explain the crushing pressure that would threaten to topple her were she not already collapsed on the ground.

She summons the strength to turn her head, and there is Morgause, tall and proud, face unlined, and Morgana smiles a real smile for the first time in years. But her smile is not returned.  
“You failed, sister,” Morgause says, and her beauty falls from her face the way wax drips from a candle: uneven and liquid. 

“I…” Morgana whispers, but the rasp is no death rattle. Morgause is a stranger to her and how can that be? She was the only one who cared about Morgana, wasn’t she?

“I’ll have this back now,” Morgause continues, and extends her hand until Morgana can’t breathe for the pain that explodes from her, until she screams and screams and Morgause holds up a flinted crystal that throbs and drips blood, blood like more candle wax. ¬¬¬“This was supposed to steel your heart to do what must be done. Yet still, you failed.”

Tears leak from Morgana’s eyes and drip onto the forest floor. Morgause shimmers and fades, leaving the crystal to thud to the ground and Morgana feels it—she feels it, and as she does, she feels the crushing pain shoot right to where the crystal once rested in her breast.

Her heart is her own, again, and at once she knows what is crushing her.

Guilt is even more powerful than a dragon-forged sword. 

But her mind and her heart are hers, now, and she knows what she must do. It had been her destiny, her real destiny, the one she hopes she will be remembered for, and she knows what it will cost.

She takes a breath, draws as much air as she can into lungs that won’t fill, and crawls. She crawls until she finds herself on the sandy shore of a lake, and there is magic in this lake, so much magic, so much of _his_ magic. How had she not recognised her kind? 

She can feel him watching her. He hasn’t moved from his spot beneath the tree for days, she’s certain; he looks as if he is part of its very bark. She wonders if he is jealous, or if he is relieved, or if he can feel anything at all.

She lets herself fall into the lake, lets the water take her down, under, through, and she is finally at peace. And she waits.

 

3\. Percival

There is no stone tomb for the fallen king, and although the horn rests in the library, no one ever tries to use it. Percival is tempted, at times. He wants Gwaine to know that he didn’t fail, and that Morgana is gone; leaving Camelot in peace forever more.

There is a monument, though, out past the lower town. It is made of stone and gold and is in the shape of a round table. Every April, someone places a tankard of mead and a dozen pickled eggs on the empty chair representing Sir Gwaine, and Sir Percival smiles. 

 

4\. Camelot

Some years later, every chair bears a name. Gaius, the court physician and later, court sorcerer; Guinevere, Camelot’s unlikely Queen; Sir Leon, who many thought would live forever. And he does, in a way, as his and Guinevere’s son ascends to the throne, and Camelot thrives in peace and plenty, as it has done since Arthur reigned. Sir Percival is the last name, and when he dies, his frame a bit less mighty and his heart a bit more heavy, he sees a lake, and a boat, and he knows. 

 

5\. Arthur

The first thing Arthur is aware of is sunlight warming his skin. He doesn’t recall his armour being removed. He hoped Merlin would remember to take the dent out of the plate. He’d not be fit to save Camelot with dented armour. The battle was coming; Saxons and Cenred and Morgana and there was a dragon terrorising the town and a Camelot was in the throes of a famine and everywhere, sorcerers sought to kill the King—

Only that wasn’t right at all, was it?

He opens his eyes and had to squint against the bright light. He hears the lapping of water, and beneath him there is grass, sweet and soft. 

He’s wearing a white shift of some sort, and no blood mars the midsection. His hand presses to the spot where Mordred has run him through, and there is nothing to feel there. As he pulls himself to seating, he finds none of the aches nor pains that he’d collected like hunting trophies from the time he was first able to wield a sword in battle. He knows that can’t be right; he knows Merlin’s no physician and his salves are only temporary at the best of times and Merlin—

Merlin is a sorcerer.

A sorcerer who saved his life, and carried him to Avalon and—

Held him as he died.

He died. 

Is this the underworld, then? Could such a place as this—of gentle waves and green grass and yellow sunlight as healing as any balm—contain the sorts of shadows and spirits he met when he glimpsed the world beyond the veil?

As Arthur looks around, he saw shapes in the grass, laid out in a circle. As if other men had lain there, and awoken to the same confusion, the same jumble of memories that were out of order and incongruent with the serenity of this place.

“Hello?” he asks, and his voice is gritty with sleep or death or whatever it was he’s awakened from.

“Arthur,” a voice replies, lilting and quiet and by the gods, he knows it is she. 

“Morgana.” He’s filled with trepidation now and his palm itches for a sword. Had Merlin failed to kill her, after all?

“He didn’t fail. Any more than you, or any of the other brave and true who slept beside you here as the rest of the world carried on, forgetting how much it owed you. Forgetting how grateful they should be.” 

She sounds different to Arthur’s ears, but no, not different after all. She sounds like a King’s ward who ensured children and old people got food, who once stood up to a king in support of her maid’s father. She sounds like his sister, the sister she had been before they knew she actually was, and it makes him want to cry.

But her talk of gratitude shakes him more still. He’d not lived long enough for the world to owe him its gratitude. He’d not done most of the things he’d meant to do. They hadn’t done all the things they were meant to do, and how odd. That sounded like Merlin’s voice.

“You’d be surprised,” Morgana says, and still Arthur looks around, but there is no sign of her. “You will be surprised, and very soon, I think.”

“What are you doing here?” Arthur is surprised to realize he is not angry. He doesn’t feel the betrayal or the regret that haunted him in his last years, for all that she did to him and to Camelot.

She doesn’t answer for a long time. “Living.”

“Isn’t living a bit difficult for the dead?” Arthur asks. 

“You tell me.” 

“I can’t see you.” Arthur finally reverts to the obvious, because the rest is too confusing. This does not feel like the great warrior’s reward he’s heard tales of; not the rest and the peace earned of a lifetime serving his people, his king, his country. 

“No, although you could if I wanted you to. And perhaps I will, one day. I think I would like that.”

Her crypticness is maddening, Arthur decides. He has no idea where-who-why-how, or for that matter, when. He wonders if he can trust anything she says.

“I’m here because I am sorry, Arthur. I let myself be used, and twisted to others’ whims, and I was paid out for my weakness in full. So now I am here, looking after this Isle, because that was always the path laid out for me.” 

“I would have protected you. From Uther.” It comes out in a rush. 

“Yes, I think you probably would have done,” is all Morgana says to that. 

Arthur doesn’t know what to say next. “How long have I been here?” he asks, finally, and he is terrified of her answer.

“Too long, Arthur Pendragon,” and it’s a new voice, still a woman, but different. He recognises it even as he turns around and sees her—rivulets of water weaving around her like ivy, like chains, like she is the lake and its lady all in one—and remembers her holding him to her breast and laying him out on the grass, under constellations of stars that he knows in his heart have long burnt themselves out. “Albion has waited far too long.”

She stands in a boat, and he knows this boat. It brought him here, to this strange place, and at once he knows this boat will take him back. 

“Back to what, though?” he asks himself, and he’s not afraid; kings cannot be afraid. He does not look old, nor feel old, but he can hear the years in the women’s voices. He realises with a sinking heart that Camelot, the kingdom that raised him so that he could raise it, must surely be gone by now. Had Guinevere remarried, and been granted the strong sons and noble daughters he had never given her; had knights enough survived and the kingdoms stayed united—none of that was any match for time. Arthur had never been a great scholar, even as a child, but he knew his history well enough. It always ended the same, because it ended. Life ended, kingdoms ended, love ended.

“Not all love ends, Arthur Pendragon,” the woman said, and she reached out her hand to him. “I know. I lay once on the shores of the lake, dressed in a fine lady’s gown—“ at that, she smiles and Morgana’s tinkling laughter fills the air—“and one who loved me begged me not to leave, and I thanked him even as the breathe left my body. He set me into a boat and put me into this lake and sent me to Avalon bearing his love. He still sends his love to this place, as he has for many lifetimes of men.” She pauses. “I think you understand that.”

Arthur’s mouth is dry and his heart beats—it _beats_ —painfully in his chest. Unbidden, an image comes to his mind. A tall figure, dark-headed, lonely, standing on the shore as all of time swirls around him, casting his love into a lake and watching for answering ripples that never come.

“I never knew,” he said, and suddenly so much made sense. “Or maybe I did, and how much worse does that make the tale?”

“It is lucky for you, then, that the tale is not yet at an end,” the woman says. “There are still dragons to slay, and kingdoms to save.” And love to return, she doesn’t say, but he hears it all the same. “Are you ready?”

Arthur lifts himself to his feet, the echo of armour and the pull of a phantom sword at his side and he wonders what strange quests and terrible obstacles lay in wait for him. “I am. But first, may I see you?” He doesn’t mean the lady of the lake, stood before him plain as day. “Please, Morgana. You owe me that.”

“Look to the island’s shore,” Morgana says, finally. And Arthur does, and there, as if behind a screen of the finest silk, he sees a great gathering: cloaks of red and the great flags of the citadel waving in the breeze. Behind them, a pale figure with raven hair and billowing sleeves stands among the apple trees, a hand raised as if in farewell.

“Not farewell, brother, for we all will meet here again and sooner than you may wish. As for your quest: you must find a way to bring him back with you. He may miss you desperately, but they miss him, too.” As she speaks, Arthur swears upon his kingdom that Gwaine and Lancelot wave.

 

6\. Emrys

Merlin makes tea the old fashioned way, a copper kettle on an open flame in the hearth of his kitchen. The cabin has changed throughout the centuries; how could it not have done? Time waits for no one, not even him, and his library is filled with books printed by press and later by computer. His bed has springs, and what a delightful invention that was. He took an aeroplane, once, even, just to see what it was like. His cabinets contain olive oil from Italy and chiles from Mexico next to tea from Ceylon—Sri Lanka, he reminds himself, and oh, how fast the world does change—and next to the tea, there is a bottle.

The glass bottle is old and rough; hand blown from sand he melted himself with a flash of gold grief when the earth reclaimed its last dragon. It contains water from the lake outside his front door, and it has been there far longer than the chiles, or the olive oil, or the tea. He has dropped it by accident, thrown it in rage, tucked it into his rucksack as he travelled and put it beneath his pillow on the most lonely of his lonely nights, but it never breaks. It is constant, the way the lake is constant, the way Emrys himself is constant.

He rarely even sees it anymore; his eyes skate over it the way they skate over the white hair and creases in his skin that stare back from his looking glass. He could change all that, he knows, and one day he will, but he doesn’t know when.

He hears the newspaper hit his front door, and he hastily reaches for a mug to pour his tea into when his hand slips, and the glass bottle falls to the old, stone floor. 

And breaks.

He wants to despair, but age has afforded him some wisdom and besides, this glass was meant to break. He feels the hair on his arms stand up and a shiver passes over his spine. It feels like a promise, a promise kept when the pooling water shines with a light he’s seen before and there is Freya, lovely Freya of the Lake, and beside her…

“Merlin,” she says. “We’re coming.”

The tea is abandoned. The old man is abandoned. Merlin grows younger and younger as he bolts down the path to the sandy shore of the lake, his heart pounding and nauseated joy and dread warring in his gut.

He skids to a stop where the water meets the land, and he feels so much love he is sure it is pouring out of him and into the water itself and

a ripple mars the water’s placid surface, and another, and another.

**Author's Note:**

> Thank you to planejane for the review.


End file.
